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News in General

MySQL announces 5.1 GA, future 6.0 dual version

MySQL 5.1 was at version 5.1.24 before the GA announcement - in part
because the company and community wanted to release a better and more stable
product than the 5.0 release 2 years earlier. A near-final release candidate
of the GPL software is available for download now at http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/.

MySQL 5.1 supports five forms of horizontal data partitioning:
range, hash, key, list, and composite (sub-partitioning). By
partitioning table and index data, faster query response times can be
achieved as only the relevant partitions of data need to be scanned,
instead of the entire table or index. It also features a new Event
Scheduler for common recurring SQL-based tasks to execute on the
database server instead of using external cron jobs.

Discussions at Slashdot and elsewhere speculated that MySQL was moving
in a proprietary direction, based on mention of 'commercial extensions'
planned for 6.0 that would only be available to subscribers to the
enterprise edition of MySQL 6; however, Marten Mickos, formerly the CEO and
spokesperson for the recently acquired MySQL Corporation, now SVP for
Database Group at Sun Microsystems, clarified the thinking at MySQL in an
email to Linux Gazette:

First and foremost, version 6.0 will be a great and fully functional
free and open source software product, available for anyone to
download, use, modify and redistribute. It is always our goal to expand
the (non-paying) user base of MySQL.
There exist today a number of ways to take backups of MySQL
databases, but in 6.0 we will have a built-in and more advanced
functionality for it. We are ourselves developing such add-ons, and we
plan to deliver them to subscription customers only. Examples of such
add-ons are encryption and compression of the backup.
Users of MySQL 6.0 can manage very well without those add-ons. They
can also build add-ons themselves, commission others to build add-ons,
or buy add-ons from MySQL's partners and probably also competitors. And
customers can buy the subscription from MySQL/Sun and thereby gain
access to the add-ons we are producing.
Also, let me note that this model is part of our MySQL Enterprise
subscription offering. Since 3 years we have a similar model for
the MySQL Monitor, which is an add-on tool that we ship to subscription
customers only. The decision on this was made long before we were
acquired by Sun (so it is entirely incorrect to think that Sun is
behind this).

The 17th USENIX Security Symposium
July 28 - August 1, San Jose, CA
Join top security researchers and practitioners in San Jose, CA, for a
5-day program that includes in-depth tutorials by experts such as Simson
Garfinkel, Bruce Potter, and Radu Sion; a comprehensive technical program
including a keynote address by Debra Bowen, California Secretary of State;
invited talks including "Hackernomics," by Hugh Thompson; the refereed
papers track including 27 papers presenting the best new research;
Work-in-Progress reports; and a poster session. Learn the latest in
security research including voting and trusted systems, privacy, botnet
detection, and more. http://www.usenix.org/sec08/lg
Register by July 14 and save up to $250!

To help test KDE and GNOME in openSUSE 11.0, see the wiki for info on reporting
bugs.

Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) LTS Desktop and Server Editions Released

As scheduled, Ubuntu 8.04 (code named "Hardy Heron") was released on 22.04.
This is a very special and long-awaited release; Hardy Heron is the
newest LTS (Long Term Support) version of the distribution. It comes in
two versions - Desktop, supported till 2011, and Server, supported till
2013. That means this distribution will have updates and security fixes
for quite a long time, a great feature for both home and business use.

With this release, Canonical tries to focus even more on the home and
office uses of GNU/Linux, bundling together several of the best
open source alternatives to the most common commercial software.

This release includes several updates, including Firefox 3.0, clock and
calendar integration, better and easier multimedia capabilities,
YouTube/MythTV integration in the default movie player, automatic camera,
phone, PSP, and other device recognition - all to make things easy to the
less-experienced Linux user, but without losing any of the security
options that Linux has always had.

Final Considerations: Loads of updates, some new features, combined with
all the features Ubuntu already had (like Printing, Windows Compatibility,
Automatic Updates), along with the Long Term Support makes this release
a very special one, worthy of checking out.

Products

Open Office 2.4 released, 3.0 on the way

OpenOffice 2.4 has finally been released. It includes new features,
enhancements, and bug fixes to all its core components. OpenOffice 2.4
is available for immediate download from http://download.openoffice.org
.

New features:

Usability improvements in printing and PDF handling
(OpenOffice creates PDF files 'out of the box' to ISO standard).
Default font is now DejaVu, which supports more languages/localizations
than the previous BitStream Vera. (Part of many localization
improvements now cover languages from Hiligaynon to Quechua.)

Writer, OpenOffice's word processor, now has easier
language selection for spell-checking; users can set options for
printing hidden text and for following hyperlinks; text selection
and 'find and replace' have been improved; and 'power users' will get
extra keyboard shortcuts for paragraph styles.

Calc, OpenOffice's spreadsheet, now streamlines
data and formula entry. Other new features include a 'smart move and
copy' for blocks of cells; the ability to transform data into columns;
and improvements to printing and data filtering.

Usability improvements have been made to Draw and
Impress, OpenOffice.org's application for creating
presentations. Both applications have enhanced PDF export capabilities. In
addition, Impress now has a new range of 3D transition effects supported
via an extension.

OpenOffice.org's database application, Base, now
supports MS-Access 2007 (accdb files on MS-Windows) and has enhanced
capabilities for MySQL, Oracle/jdbc, and native (HSQL) databases. The
Query Designer is also improved.

The next major release - 3.0 - is planned for the autumn of 2008.
That major release will offer support for the unique file formats of
MS-Office 2007 and will have official support for Mac. Multiple
Page Views has been implemented in the 3.0 beta, which will allow pages
side-by-side instead all pages stacked top-to-bottom. The "View Layout"
control in 3.0 switches between single page, several pages side by
side, and book layout views.

Kickfire Appliance Accelerates MySQL

At the MySQL User Conference in April, Kickfire announced the first
high-performance database appliance for the expanding MySQL market.
Kickfire had been in stealth mode prior to the event.

Separately, Kickfire and Sun Microsystems announced record-breaking
TPC-H price/performance benchmark results that demonstrate the
performance efficiency and price/performance leadership of Kickfire's
design. Some SQL queries run at 100x the speed it would on a dedicated
server.

Based on a patented SQL chip that packs the power of tens of CPUs
into an exceptionally small, low-power form factor, Kickfire appliances
avoid the server build out, power, and space costs of today's data
warehouse and database offerings. Kickfire's query performance enables
organizations to use MySQL for demanding business intelligence,
reporting, and analysis applications rather than non-open source
alternatives. Kickfire appliances scale from gigabytes to terabytes and
are based on commodity hardware and Linux. They leverage existing
storage as well as the openness of MySQL and its entire ecosystem to
ensure compatibility and rapid deployment.

The appliance uses MySQL running on a standard x86 Linux server but
processes SQL on a dedicated chip. Customers have the option to connect
their own storage devices.

"Kickfire's Database Appliance delivers query performance of half a
room of hardware in a double-height pizza box with the power
requirement of a microwave oven," said Raj Cherabuddi, CEO and
co-Founder, Kickfire. "No longer do MySQL database customers need to
migrate away from the world's leading open source database to scale up
to higher performance as data volumes grow."

Kickfire also announced partnerships with five leading vendors in
the open source world to provide joint customers the ability to deploy
business intelligence solutions that leverage its high-performance
MySQL database appliance. Working with JasperSoft, Pentaho, Sun
Microsystems, Talend, and Zmanda, Kickfire customers can deploy
high-performance, end-to-end business intelligence solutions with
online backup based on MySQL.

Defensics Test Platform Fuzzes Network Equipment

In April, Codenomicon released DEFENSICS 3.0, the third generation
of its security and quality testing platform that allows network
product and service manufacturers and vendors to identify and fix flaws
before their offerings reach the market. Defensics 3.0 is a series of
test modules that apply model-based fuzzing and penetration techniques
to network and communications protocols and allows user-supplied testing
as well.

Since 2001, the Codenomicon Defensics test platform has been
applying fuzzing techniques to provide preemptive security testing for
network equipment. Defensics is a Java-based software package that runs
on any standard computing platform with JVM support. This includes COTS
x86 hardware, MACs, Sparc systems and Power architecture servers. This
can provide a significant cost advantage over dedicated applilances.
Pentitum class hardware with 1 GB of RAM is suffient for running the
software in a small environment with a few targets.

The new version has support for several new and exiting protocols
and digital media formats such as WiMAX, STUN, TURN, vCal, iCal, vCard,
OCSP, SOAP, XMPP, and many others. The previous version of defensics
already had 140 communications protocols included. It can test wireless
devices, consumer electronics and Web services.

Ari Takanen, founder and CTO of Codenomicon, told Linux Gazette that
his company is providing several open source projects with full access
to its testing solutions, through Codenomicon's CROSS program, to find
and fix a large number of critical flaws very rapidly. This differs
from the traditional FOSS model of users and security researchers
reporting bugs one by one. In the first phase of the CROSS initiative,
Codenomicon has targeted 15-20 open source projects to work with. After
evaluating the program, Codenomicon hopes to open it to more open
source projects. Takanen told Linux Gazette that a large number of
vulnerabilities had been detected and the results could not be publicly
released until these had been addressed by the participating projects.

InnoDB Plugin 1.0 for MySQL 5.1 Announced

At the April MySQL User Conference, InnoDB announced the initial
availability of the early adopter release of the InnoDB Plugin. Testers
can now download an
early adopter release of the upgraded version. The update supports
several new features for improved performance, reliability, ease of use and
flexibility. See here for a
description of the new features for MySQL 5.1. Documentation for the
plugin is available here.

The early adopter release is available in source and binary (for most
platforms) and is licensed under GPLv2. Users can dynamically install it
within MySQL 5.1 on Linux and other Unix-like operating systems (and soon
on Windows) without compiling from source or relinking MySQL. (For now,
Windows users must re-build from source.)

Databases created with the built-in InnoDB in MySQL are compatible with
the InnoDB Plugin, and support is available via the new InnoDB Forums.

Avnet announced the launch of a Complete MicroBlaze Processor Linux Design
Solution, including:

A new Xilinx(r) MicroBlaze(r) Processor Linux DVD

A MicroBlaze Processor Linux Starter Kit; and

The launch of a Linux for MicroBlaze Processor SpeedWay Design
Workshop, providing a complete platform for running embedded Linux on a
MicroBlaze processor implemented in a Spartan-3A DSP FPGA.

The stand-alone Linux for MicroBlaze Processor DVD is based on both
PetaLogix Petalinux and LynuxWork's BlueCAT Linux distribution and tool
chains. The DVD demonstrates how to port Linux into a Field Programmable
Gate Array (FPGA) design using the 32-bit Xilinx MicroBlaze processor.
It also highlights the benefits and tradeoffs when using the new Memory
Management Unit (MMU) in the MicroBlaze processor. The new MMU enables
designers to use commercial-grade operating systems when implementing
their embedded designs with Xilinx FPGAs.

The MicroBlaze Processor Linux Starter Kit includes the Linux for
MicroBlaze Processor DVD, the Xilinx(r) Embedded Development Kit -
Spartan(tm)-3A DSP MicroBlaze Processor Edition, and attendance at an
Avnet Linux for MicroBlaze Processor Workshop, providing a complete
platform for running embedded Linux on a MicroBlaze processor
implemented in a Spartan-3A DSP FPGA.

Avnet has also launched the Linux for MicroBlaze Processor Workshop --
part of the Avnet SpeedWay Design Workshop Series. The workshop offers
support for embedded developers through a full day hands-on session that
provides practical knowledge on utilizing Xilinx tools and Internet
Protocol (IP) to create a MicroBlaze processor (based Linux system
within an FPGA). The course is aimed at software and hardware designers
considering an operating system for their next embedded processor based
application.

The Linux for MicroBlaze DVD and starter kit are available through Avnet
in the Americas, Japan and selected countries in Europe and Asia. For
more information and to purchase, please visit:
www.em.avnet.com/linuxmb

Macraigor Systems announced the immediate availability of a free
Eclipse-compliant embedded debugging solution with sample Eclipse
projects that run on many standard evaluation boards for hosting on
the Linux platform. This provides embedded systems engineers with an
integrated platform for developing and debugging embedded systems using the
Eclipse platform.

The Macraigor Eclipse + GNU Tools Suite (http://www.macraigor.com/Eclipse/)
is an implementation that packages Eclipse 3.2.1, several of the open
source GNU tools and utilities, and a program called OCDRemote, which
provides an interface between Eclipse, the GDB debugger and a Macraigor
On-Chip Debug device. The GNU tools provided by Macraigor Systems include
binutils, gcc, gdb and gdbtui.

Truviso Contributes PostgreSQL Enhancements to Open Source Community

As part of its commitment to the open source community, Truviso, a leading
provider of next-generation business intelligence solutions, announced that
it has completed an enhancement to the PostgreSQL open source database
system that further extends its suitability for streaming data analysis.
Truviso also announced it will contribute this enhancement to the
PostgreSQL community, reinforcing the company's foundational tenet of
building upon and sharing mutually beneficial improvements to open source
code with the PostgreSQL community.

VIA Announces Strategic Open Source Driver Development Initiative

VIA will provide a vehicle for improved collaboration with the Open Source
community with opening of the official VIA Linux Website. VIA Linux Portal
will offer drivers, technical documentation and source code for popular Linux
distributions such as Ubuntu.

As the first step in this initiative, VIA opened its official VIA Linux
website in April. The site will initially host
drivers, technical documentation, source code, and information regarding
the VIA CN700, CX700/M, CN896, and the new VIA VX800 chipsets.

The VIA Linux Portal currently offers graphics drivers for the VIA CN896
digital media IGP chipset for the new Ubuntu 8.04 LTS distribution.
Documentation and source code for these drivers will be released over the
coming weeks, with official forums and bug tracking scheduled for
implementation later this year. The VIA Linux Portal will also adhere to a
regular release schedule that is aligned with kernel changes and the
release of major Linux distributions.

Over the following months, VIA will work with the community to enable 2D,
3D and video playback acceleration to ensure the best possible Open Source
experience on VIA Processor Platforms.

"We welcome the steps being taken by VIA to improve its support to the Open
Source community," said Chris Kenyon, Director of Business Development at
Canonical. "We look forward to working with VIA to ensure these drivers get
built into Ubuntu by default and that Ubuntu developers and users enjoy a
great experience when using VIA platforms."

"VIA is excited to be taking a more active role within the open source
ecosystem," said Richard Brown, Vice President of Corporate Marketing, VIA
Technologies, Inc. "Opening the VIA Linux Portal is an important step in
our long term open source initiative and offering support for Ubuntu, one
of the most widely known of the Linux distributions, is an ideal place to
start."

The beta version of the VIA Linux Portal is located at
http://linux.via.com.tw and currently offers driver files for Ubuntu 8.04
LTS and SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 Service Pack 1 for the VIA CN896
chipset with two south bridge options.

Kat Tanaka Okopnik

Kat likes to tell people she's one of the youngest people to have learned
to program using punchcards on a mainframe (back in '83); but the truth is
that since then, despite many hours in front of various computer screens,
she's a computer user rather than a computer programmer.

Her transition away from other OSes started with the design of a
massively multilingual wedding invitation.

When away from the keyboard, her hands have been found wielding of knitting
needles, various pens, henna, red-hot welding tools, upholsterer's shears,
and a pneumatic scaler. More often these days, she's occupied with managing
her latest project.

Howard Dyckoff

Howard Dyckoff is a long term IT professional with primary experience at
Fortune 100 and 200 firms. Before his IT career, he worked for Aviation
Week and Space Technology magazine and before that used to edit SkyCom, a
newsletter for astronomers and rocketeers. He hails from the Republic of
Brooklyn [and Polytechnic Institute] and now, after several trips to
Himalayan mountain tops, resides in the SF Bay Area with a large book
collection and several pet rocks.

Howard maintains the Technology-Events blog at
blogspot.com from which he contributes the Events listing for Linux
Gazette. Visit the blog to preview some of the next month's NewsBytes
Events.

Deividson Luiz Okopnik

Deividson was born in União da Vitória, PR, Brazil, on
14/04/1984. He became interested in computing when he was still a kid,
and started to code when he was 12 years old. He is a graduate in
Information Systems and is finishing his specialization in Networks and
Web Development. He codes in several languages, including C/C++/C#, PHP,
Visual Basic, Object Pascal and others.

Deividson works in Porto União's Town Hall as a Computer
Technician, and specializes in Web and Desktop system development, and
Database/Network Maintenance.